Sea anchors are known in the nautical arts and are used for many purposes. Sea anchors are somewhat in the form of a parachute, and are deployed beneath the surface of the water and resist moving through the water. A sea anchor may be used to more or less anchor a boat aganst the movement of the wind and surface currents when it is desired to fish from the boat, for example. A sea anchor may also be very useful with a boat that is used for trolling. In larger boats, both inboard and outboard, and also the inboard-outboard variety, it is often not possible to slow the engine down to a proper point for achieving the necessary low speed for trolling. A sea anchor may be used to slow the speed.
Prior sea anchors are generally fixed in the extent to which they can provide resistance to movement through the water. Thus, while a given sea anchor may be quite satisfactory for obtaining trolling speed with one boat, it may be entirely unsatisfactory for a different boat. Furthermore, conventional sea anchors are difficult to return to the boat, except for certain sea anchors that may be inverted for retrieval. However, such latter anchors cannot then be redeployed without being taken on board the boat, thus precluding the possibility of repositioning the sea anchor relative to the boat without entirely removing the sea anchor from the water.
In accordance with our aforesaid prior application Ser. No. 361,829, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,481,900; issued Nov. 13, 1984 we have provided a sea anchor with a central opening. The opening is adjustable as to size, and preferably is adjustable before the sea anchor is placed in the water, but may be adjusted while in the water, thus to determine the maximum drag attainable, in accordance with the necessity of a given boat. Furthermore, the sea anchor is provided with pull-type controls from the boat for turning the sea anchor partially inside out, and thus markedly to vary the amount of drag to be attained, less than the maximum drag. Turning of the anchor substantially inside out markedly reduces the drag so that the anchor can be pulled toward the boat without great effort. However, since the sea anchor is never turned completely inside out, it can be substantially instantly redeployed from the boat without the necessity of hoisting it aboard the boat.
In utilizing the aforesaid sea anchor of our prior application Ser. No. 361,829, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,481,900; issued Nov. 13, 1984 we have found that very large boats require a sea anchor which is very large, and which sells in relatively restricted quantities, with a different anchor for each size, thereby making manufacture of such very large anchors economically impractical.
However, in experimenting further we have discovered that a plurality of smaller anchors can be utilized in tandem, thereby attaining a greater anchoring effect, and permitting the anchoring effect to be scaled appropriately to the size of the boat, thus avoiding the necessity of producing more or less custom sizes.